How does one theme an editorial for the edition that deals with a wide range of issues in the broader field of public affairs? It is a challenge for the editors to knit the discourse in different articles that comprise an edition of a journal into a coherent summary. However, the profundity of the discourse in a journal lies in the diversity of articles that comprise it. The articles that comprise this June edition of the Journal of Public Administration are diverse in their themes, hence an elongated titling of this editorial note. However, in their diversity, the questions that undergird the essence of their discourse can be aggregated into one: how can the state be optimised for the common good? This question is as old as the history of institutionalising social order for coexistence. Its answers are subjects of the contexts of history. In other words, answers to this question in the 20th century are not answers to the same questi